


Pieces of Memory

by Rochelle_Templer



Series: Inktober For Writers 2017 [24]
Category: City Hunter (Manga)
Genre: Gen, Introspection, brief mentions of canonical death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-25 10:49:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12529624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rochelle_Templer/pseuds/Rochelle_Templer
Summary: Sometimes, it's only when something is gone that you realize what it meant to you....





	Pieces of Memory

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of my Inktober for Writers project. The prompt for this fic was "breakable".

It all started over a vase.

Kaori had been doing a stack of dishes that morning, leftover from when a client had dinner with her and Ryo the previous evening. She had been in a hurry to get her work done and was carrying a stack of plates when her arm brushed up against a counter, knocking the vase to the floor. It fell apart into several pieces upon impact.

Kaori carefully sat the stack of plates down and crouched closer to the floor to look at the remains of the vase. It was an old vase. Cheap and plain with some dingy yellow and orange flowers in the middle of a white background. It had become chipped in the first week that she had bought it. Part of the reason Kaori kept it in the kitchen was to keep it out of view when guests visited.

Kaori sighed and got up to get a dust pan and brush to clean it up. While it was part of the décor from the apartment where she lived with her brother, this wasn’t a vase she would miss all that much. Not really. There were no special memories attached to it and Hideyuki never seemed to notice it.

Still, as she tried to pick up the larger pieces and put them in the pan, she felt a little hole open up in her heart.

One of the shards cut her finger, a paper-cut thin line that hurt more than it bled. Kaori tried to tell herself that the pain she felt at that moment was from the cut rather than because this vase had been destroyed. She brushed the rest of the pieces into the pan, trying hard to make that reasoning stick and failing completely.

It wasn’t until she had the mess swept up and was about to deposit it into the bin that she realized the source of her pain. It wasn’t the vase itself. It was the fact that another piece of her memory’s landscape had been erased.

Kaori sniffed hard and dumped the broken pieces into the wastebasket. It was stupid to get so upset over a vase. She had much better things to remember her brother by. Still, she couldn’t deny that she always derived some comfort over the presence of places and things that were around her when Hideyuki was alive. Like that newspaper stand where he bought his daily paper and cigarettes. Like the soba noodle shop he liked to eat on Saturdays. Even something like the night stand he used to keep in his room, which was now in her bedroom, was a pleasant reminder of all of the little moments and routines from their shared life. Their continued existence kept her memories of her brother just a little more vivid.

She leaned over the sink and tried to catch her breath. Would she ever stop feeling upset at these sudden reminders of her brother? Would the rest of her life be spent clutching at anything and everything that helped her remember him and what she had lost when he died? It was a depressing, horrifying thought and yet, Kaori could not stop dwelling on it.

Kaori blinked hard a few more times and then went back to her dishes, trying her best to blot those thoughts from her mind.

* * *

 

A couple of days later, Kaori was getting ready to clean the kitchen again when something caught her eye. She stopped and stared for a full minute until she realized that the vase had been replaced by one that could have been its twin. It wasn’t chipped, but otherwise it was the same in every other aspect. Inside were a couple of carnations.

 _‘How did this get there?’_ she wondered. _‘Did Ryo….?’_

Kaori thought back to earlier that day and a comment from Ryo brought a smile to her lips.

_“But I didn’t go to the love hotels, Kaori-chan. All I did was check out the mokkori visions at this going-out-of-business sale downtown. But all they wanted to look at was a bunch of old junk.”_

_‘Old junk…like this old vase,’_ she thought. ‘ _Ryo….’_

It wasn’t exactly the same. Nothing ever could be when it’s part of the past. But it still felt like something warm and familiar.

And it reminded Kaori that for every thing that she had lost, something else would be found.


End file.
